OLLI Presents Women Spies and Code Breakers Spring 2020 Alan Rubin [email protected] Women Spies and Code Breakers 1840: Augusta Ada King WWI: Elizbeth Smith Freedman Code Breaker WWII: Bletchley Park Code Breakers WWII: Agnes Meyer Driscoll Code Breaker WWII: Virginia Hall Spy WWII: Madame Fourcade Spy WWII: Odette Sansom Spy Post Cold War: Amaryllis Fox: CIA Agent Week 3 • Comments from class members. • Use of Girls vs Women. • J. Edger Hoover, General Charles De Gaulle and women. • --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- • Marie-Madeleine Fourcade. • Why have we not heard about her? • Not a hero but a heroine. • Her team. • Key members of her network 3,000 strong Alliance network. • Very few were trained spies. • Nazi’s nicknamed her network Noah’s Arc. • Agents given code names of animals. • Marie-Madeleine was hedgehog. WWII French Zones General Charles De Gaulle--Marshal Philippe Petain • June 18, 1940 Appeal to French on BBC to resist the German occupiers. • Considered the beginning of the French Resistance. • De Gaulle had recently be promoted to rank of Brigadier General. • “How can I rule a country with so many chiefs?” • Marshall Petain—WWI hero. • Named Prime Minister after PM Paul Reynaud resigned. • De Gaulle opposed Petain and was forced to flee France on June 17, 1940. • Petain became head of Vichy government and pro-Nazi. • Free French Resistance movement started in Vichy area. Marie-Madeleine Fourcade • In December 1940, the operations chief of France’s largest spy The picture can't be displayed. network walked into a bar in the port city of Marseille to recruit a source. • The potential recruit was named Gabriel Rivière. He was a burly, mustachioed man who knew more about maritime traffic in the Mediterranean than anyone in town, and as he stared at the spymaster, his jaw hit the floor. • “Good God!” he shouted. “It’s a woman!” • If this sounds familiar—IT IS! A French Virginia Hall. • 1941—Fourcade became head of vast intelligence organization. • Age 31. • Born to privilege. Educated in Singapore. • Two children. • Strong-willed and independent. • Lifelong rebel against France’s patriarchal society. • Strongly resented France’s quick surrender. Noah’s Arc • 1941– Marie-Madeleine Fourcade became head of Alliance network. • Nazi’s Gestapo called it “Noah’s Arc” as all agents were named after animals. • Fourcade called herself Hedgehog, a tough little animal. • A colleague commented. “Even a lion would hesitate to bite.” Epitomizes Fourcade's attitude! "We cannot...accept a German victory. It would be slavery...for each individual Frenchman. It is better to die in the fight than to survive a defeat that will degrade all human beings, deprive us of our rights, and crush us." - Anatole Lewitsky Interview with Lynn Olsen • 1941– Marie-Madeleine Fourcade became head of Alliance network • Nazi’s Gestapo called it “Noah’s Arc as all agents were named after animals. • Fourcade called Hedgehog, a tough little animal. • A colleague commented. “Even a lion would hesitate to bite.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cqmm4PcIJ4&t=1102s Germans in France • French people lived in fear. • Nazi’s had stranglehold over the media. • Controlled the press. • Pariser Zeitung. • Took care to please the French. • Nazi’s administered Northern France. • Vichy administered Southern France. • Continual shortages. • Fuel. • Labor. • POW’s. • Plunder exchange rate. • 1 RM to 20 FF. • Disorganized transportation system. • Blockade and loss of international trade. Germans in Paris Bastille Day Execution French Resistance Fighters • Only known photograph of French Resistance fighters being executed. by a German firing squad on the outskirts of Paris. • Despite more than 1,000 being killed, it was thought that no pictures were taken. Fourcade’s Agents Marie George Robert Douin Leon Faye Fourcade Loustanau-Lacau Monique Bontinck Jeannie Rousseau Robert Douin Jacques Stosskopf Q & A Odette Sansom: Code Name Lisa • Born in France, Odette was married to an Englishman who died in battle in France. • Responding to a British Army appeal for photos of the French coastline, Odette mailed a set of old holiday snapshots to the War Office. • When asked to appear in person, she went to the office of the SOE by mistake. • As a result, Odette was approached to serve as a British agent in France during the Nazi occupation. • Under the guidance of Capt. Peter Churchill and French resistance soldier Arnaud Odette's ability to blend in as a typical French citizen was put to excellent use by Allied intelligence. • Odette was eventually found out and subjected to brutal torture by Gestapo Col. Henri (Marius Goring). • Odette never gave up any information on her work. • She was then sentenced to death in a concentration camp, and when American forces arrived to liberate the compound, Odette was held hostage by the camp's Commandant Alfred Schieske, believing that she was too valuable to let go. • He packed a picnic basket and drove her into the woods towards the advancing American lines in the hope that Odette vouch for him. • Instead, she denounced him as a war criminal and he was arrested. Odette Sansom and Peter Churchill • Did not have a happy marriage with first husband Roy. • He was killed serving in the war when Odette joined SOE. • When she and Roy Sansom divorced and she married Peter Churchill it completed a Hollywood ending, although that marriage ended in divorce too. She later married Geoffrey Hallowes, who had also served in the SOE. Sergeant Hugo "Colonel Henri" Bleicher • Born in Germany in 1899. • Recruited by Abwehr (German military intelligence)during WWII for his knowledge of French and Spanish. • .Referred to as Colonel, but never rose above rand of sergeant. • Ruthlessly pursued anyone who opposed German domination. • Bleicher disabled the Franco-Polish “Interallie” spy network. • Captured Roman Czemiawsi and some of his headquarters staff including Mathilde Carne, who had contacts with the Vichy 2 Bureau. • March 1943 arrested Andre Marsac. Resistance member known as Carte. • Masquerading on his own as a German Colonel attempting to defect to the Allies. • Deceived Andre Marsac and got his associate Rodger Bardet to become a double agent. • Marsac was a courier for the French resistance organization CARTE. • Bardet betrayed SOE agents Peter Churchill and Odette Sansom. Arrested in April 1943. • Sansom was brutally treated. Saved because Germans believed Peter was a relative of British PM Winston Churchill. • Bleicher betrayed many French agents, many who died in German concentration camps. • After the war, arrested in Amsterdam by Dutch intelligence and transferred to UK on June 16, 1945. Sergeant Hugo "Colonel Henri" Bleicher-2 • Hugo Bleicher, together with two of his French Abwehr agents Jean Rocquefort and Francois Barbier, was arrested in Amsterdam on 15 May 1945 by the Dutch NBS (intelligence). • Interrogated him for two weeks on his activities in the Netherlands before handing him over to the first Canadian Army. who interrogated him for a further period, also on his operations in the Netherlands, before handing him over to the British authorities, who transferred him on 16 June 1945 to the UK for longer term interrogation at Camp 020. • He was handed over to the French government on 12 October 1945, and they subsequently placed him on trial and imprisoned him. • While imprisoned in Paris he met Bardet and told him he had planned to assassinate him on one occasion as Bardet knew too much against him. • In 1954, he published his memoirs, Colonel Henri's story. • Bleicher (sometimes misreported as Bliechert) actively employed the aliases Jean Verbeck and Colonel Henri (often misreported as Colonel Heinrich). • He held, but never used, identity papers in the name of Jean Castel. He landed in the UK under the Canadian supplied alias of Charles Davidson, and has been misreported as using the names von Stahlen, Henri Bothereau or Gottschalk. He was decorated by the Abwehr with the War Merit Cross 1st Class for his services. Noor Inayat Khan • Khan was a wartime British secret agent of Indian descent. • First female radio operator sent into Nazi-occupied France by the Special Operations Executive (SOE). • She was arrested and eventually executed by the Gestapo. • 1914-1944 Born in Moscow to an Indian father and American mother. • Direct descendant of Tipu Sultan, 18th century Muslim ruler of Mysore. • Father was a musician and Sufi teacher. • Moved family to Paris, then London after the fall of France. • November 1940—joined the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force). • Late 1942—joined SOE (Special Operations Officer) • Some questioner her stability. (Not uncommon among recruits). • June 1943—flown to France as a radio operator in “Prosper” resistance network. (highest mortality rate of any category). Code name Madeleine. • Many network members arrested shortly after, but Khan elected to stay in France. • October 1943—betrayed by a French woman and arrested by Gestapo. • Unwisely kept copies of her secret signals. Germans were able to trick London into sending new agents directly into German hands. • Captured, escaped many times. Finally sent to Pforzheim prison in Germany. Tortured and kept in chains. • Transferred with three other female SOE agents to Dachau and executed. • For her courage, Noor Khan was posthumously awarded the George Cross in 1949. Amaryllis Fox-CIA • Oxford undergraduate studying theology and international law. • Mentor Daniel Pearl was captured and beheaded in Afghanistan. • Galvanized by this-applied to Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. • Master’s program in conflict and terrorism. • As part of the program, Ms. Fox designed an algorithm (“ratio of hookah bars to madrassas and percentage beneath livable wage a border guard gets paid”) to identify likely terrorist safe havens. The C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., heard about “the algo” and recruited Amaryllis, who at 22 became one of the youngest female officers. • The agency assigned her to “nonofficial cover,” meaning an agent must live abroad “in the most dangerous places the planet has to offer” under a false identity with no diplomatic protections or official passport.